


i like you unsweet

by stutteringpeach



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Ficlet, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 04:37:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19077640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutteringpeach/pseuds/stutteringpeach
Summary: Five things Gendry finds problematic about Arya.





	i like you unsweet

**1\. Her tendency to overuse the word 'fuck.'**

She claimed it was expressive.

Sansa wrinkled her nose. ‘The only thing it expresses is a lack of education on alternative adjectives. Honestly, Arya, if Mum or Dad heard how much you swear they would ask your fancy boarding school for their money back.’

Arya rolled her eyes. ‘Sounds like you’re in need of a good fuck yourself.’

‘Arya!’ Sansa was scandalised. 

'Come on, Sansa, it's just a word. Why don't you pull that stick out of your arse and lighten up?'

‘It's vulgar! Your language is filthier than a Fleabottom sewer. Gendry agrees with me. Don’t you?’

He gulped as both sisters turned towards him, facing Sansa’s glare versus Arya’s scowl. Gendry might not have agreed fully with Sansa - Arya was the smartest person he knew and regularly used words way beyond his comprehension. But she did say _fuck_ perhaps more than necessary. In wholly inappropriate situations. Like meeting his boss. Or his mother, for example.

Gendry settled for a shrug.

‘Ha!’ Sansa cried triumphantly. ‘He agrees with me!’

Arya told them both to fuck off.

(But when she was writhing below him, or more likely on top of him, her hands splayed on his chest, the half-moons of her nails digging in to his skin, her hips grinding round and down onto him, her head thrown back, pale neck exposed, just ready for him to sink his teeth into and his tongue to suck that soft skin as she started to stutter and clench around him she’d utter a perfect _‘fuck’_ he could never bring himself to hate the word quite as much.)

**2\. Her stubborn refusal to do anything someone told her to do, no matter what it was. (And her tendency to do the opposite, just to spite them)**

Arya was contrary, at best. 

She was going to the University of King's Landing because her whole family had gone to Riverrun. She'd worn combat boots and a mini skirt to Sansa's graduation and stuck out like a sore thumb in the photos, her mother complaining that only if she'd  _just worn the outfit I set out_. She'd get furious when they told her she couldn't go out with them that night because _she was fifteen_ , but she'd sneak out of the house anyway and be at the bar sipping a pint when they arrived. She joined a fight club when her mother had signed her up for dance lessons for cotillion and then had skipped the whole thing to drink beer in the park with him and Jon. She'd ignore his directions and drive the wrong way home. Her family had  _loved_ her first boyfriend Mycah, so she'd dumped him immediately after the dinner where he'd met her parents.

(He’d insisted that he was too old for her. Jon had said as much when they’d downed a few beers - _‘nothing against you, mate, it’s just that she’s my little sister’-_ and Gendry had confessed that he and Arya had been entertaining a flirtation. It had started when she'd come home for the summer and Gendry had suddenly realised how little Arry Stark was not-so-little anymore. Nothing had happened, but he sure as hell had been thinking about it. He was pretty sure she had too from the way she'd been parading around in tiny shorts and that fucking white bikini, sucking on a lollipop like she was in a porno. But hells, she'd been ten when he'd met Jon at that boxing club and she'd been there, swinging on the ropes of the ring, furious that she wasn't old enough to join and fight like she wanted to. Now she was eighteen, revelling in that lazy summer between school and university, with nothing to do but lounge around by their pool drinking orange juice and eye-fuck him while he trimmed the hedges and mowed the lawn for some extra cash from Mrs Stark to supplement his job at the garage.

'Look, Arya, I really like you, you know I do. And as more than my mate's little sister, for a good while now,' he said. 'But this can't happen.'

'Why not?' 

' _Because_ you're my mate's little sister. I'm five years older than you. Jon will cut my balls off and feed them to Ghost.'

Gendry should have known better than to tell her no, because that was when her eyebrows drew in and her mouth set in a hard line and her eyes grew fierce, and she kissed him so forcefully he was almost certain she’d draw blood from his lips.)

**3\. She would disagree for the sake of disagreeing.**

Their arguments were ferocious. He had known that they’d never be one of those couples who confessed simperingly, ‘ _we never argue; we’re best friends so we just get along so well!’_ Arya was his best friend but she was too fucking stubborn to relent and he was far too bull-headed to let her get away with it. Arya would argue the sky was green if she thought she was going to win. Relationships weren’t supposed to be about winning but Arya _loved_ to win. She loved it probably more than she loved Nymeria and throwing knives and Jon. Talisa had made some comment about how the best thing she and Robb had learnt when they’d got married was to keep quiet when you were right and to apologise when you were wrong. Well, Arya loved to speak up when she was right and insist she was right when Gendry definitely knew she was wrong. Gendry would shout at her until he was hoarse and she’d give back as good as she got. She’d been known to throw things once or twice - Sansa still thought her pale turquoise art-deco jug had gone walkabout in the move from uni halls to the apartment she now shared with Arya.

(She’d adamantly refused to believe that they’d only been together five months and insisted it had been six, therefore the tickets to see his all-time favourite band The Night’s Watch were neither too early nor too expensive.

It had actually only been five months and four days since the day Gendry had taken her to the waterfall an hour out of King’s Landing, where she’d terrified him by leaping from the rocky ledge they’d just clambered up about two thirds of the way up the waterfall and plunged into the swirling pool below. He had panicked and desperately searched for her and frantically wondered whether he could call her brother Robb to bring the military helicopter out to find her when she’d emerged laughing, dark hair streaming down her back as she looked up at him and called him a pussy for not jumping in after her. That afternoon they’d laid on a sunny rock and he’d asked her to be his girlfriend, to which she’d rolled her eyes and settled on top of him, answering him with a kiss and a swirl of her hips.

‘No, stupid,’ she retorted, eyes flashing at him like they did when she was certain she was right. ‘It’s been six months since we kissed at Jon’s birthday. I remember because you freaked out when he walked in on us in that cupboard.’

‘But I didn’t ask you out properly until a few weeks later!’

‘Well that’s a bit fucking archaic. I wouldn’t have kissed you that night if I hadn’t wanted to be your girlfriend. It’s six.’)

**4\. Her disturbing love of violence.**

Much to Sansa’s chagrin, Arya’s choice of film was always something with a lot of blood, a lot of fight scenes and a lot of death. She was slowly working her way through a list of the thirty most violent movies ever made and thanks to a screening of _Natural Born Killers_ the Starks had adamantly refused to allow her choices anymore at family movie night.

She did mixed martial arts, gymnastics for flexibility and balance and she was teaching herself how to throw knives. She swanned around with giant hunting knives and petite daggers strapped to the belt at her waist, flinging them with precision and speed at trees on the edge of the wood that fringed the Stark family estate. She’d turned up to Robb’s wedding with a blade strapped in an ankle holster under the soft chiffon of her bridesmaid’s dress.

'Ever wonder what it would be like to kill someone?'

Gendry looked up where he was reading his book at the side of the pool, his trousers rolled up over his ankles, feet kicking in the cool water. Arya was draped on a donut-shaped inflatable, cherry-red heart-shaped sunglasses over her eyes, her lips favouring the straw of an icy glass. Gendry swallowed thickly. She was Lolita and he was Humbert, forbidden and improper, but with a tendency to fixate on more murderous forms of foreplay.

He sighed and set his book down. 'What are you thinking this time?' This wasn't an unfamiliar conversation.

'Asphyxiation,' she said casually, not bothering to open her eyes as she tilted her face to the sun. 'Drowning, perhaps.'

'You wouldn't be strong enough to drown someone.'

At this, she pulled her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose to peer at him and slipped out of the ring to swim over to him. 'Want to bet?' she smirked devilishly and grabbed his ankles to yank him into the pool fully clothed.

(Sex with Arya was sort of like fighting. She preferred it quick and hard, when his fingers would grip her hips with such strength she would bruise. She preferred it over the nights when he wanted to worship her, to trace every curve of her body with his tongue, when he breathed out her name like a caress. She didn't like slow, she liked passion and rage, deliberately antagonising him because she knew the make up sex would be magnificent. She'd beg to be bent over the kitchen table or ride him in the front seat of his car, she'd tie his hands to her bed and force him not to touch her. She was quick but he was stronger, and when he had her pinned against the wall, both of her small wrists held in his vice-like grip as he thrust into her ferociously he knew that was when she loved him best.)

**5\. She was extremely suspicious of new people.**

When asked, Arya would say a lot of it was because of Sansa’s particularly horrendous taste in men. There had been Joffrey the Wanker, Ramsey the Psychopath and that creepy-as-fuck friend of their mum’s Baelish who perved on her sister every time their aunt brought him to some awkward family gathering.

She’d say it was no bloody surprise that she didn’t trust other people after the Freys had fucked over Robb’s political career before it had even got off the ground, after she’d been stabbed in the back by her roommate from her year abroad in Essos (Gendry never did find out what had gone down) and since the fight club she’d been in since she was twelve had outlawed women.

But Sansa was dating Pod now, who was probably the sweetest, loveliest man in all of Westeros. Robb was flourishing in the military and his relationship with Talisa hadn’t been damaged at all. Arya had come back from her year in Braavos more capable and clever than ever and she’d set up a new female-only mixed martial arts club that was thriving.

But then Jon brought his new girlfriend home and she was blonde and Essosian and Arya was immediately distrustful.

‘Seven hells, Arya,’ Jon had yelled, frustratedly pushing his hands into his hair. ‘You won’t make many friends if the only people you trust are your family!’

‘That’s okay,’ she said, eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t need many friends.’

(She fixed Gendry with a steady gaze, her hands in his, firm and sure. ‘You’re my family now.’)


End file.
